The Baby
by burnttongueontea
Summary: John's popping out, Mary's visiting friends, and it's the first time Sherlock's been left alone with their new baby. This should be fine, right? It's not like it's a pivotal moment for the viability of their post-Reichenbach friendship or anything stressful like that.


**Hello! I was pleased with my previous fic about Sherlock and John's daughter (Babysitting). So I thought I'd write another one to go with it. Sorry it's kinda long. (There's no need to have read the other to understand this.)**

* * *

"_Fifteen minutes," _John said in a very loud and deliberate voice, looking Sherlock right in the eye, as if this was the most important information he had ever imparted. "Fifteen. Minutes."

"You don't think I'm worried?"

"I didn't suggest _you_ were. It's _me _who's anxious."

"So why does your body language suggest command, rather than anxiety?"

John rolled his eyes.

"It's a warning. Because if you manage to do anything terrible to my two-month-old daughter in that time, I will hold it against you for the rest of your life. A quarter of an hour is not long."

"Is that so? I thought it was equivalent to several years... John, you don't need to explain the concept of time to me. Besides, even in several years, I wouldn't be likely to severely injure your offspring. I do happen to have common sense."

"Well," John replied, doubtfully. "We'll see about that. And I will be back."

"Good luck collecting your parcel from the delivery office. Since it's to be such a long and arduous trip."

Shaking his head, John hurried to the door and started wrestling himself into his jacket. It took a few embarrassing moments. He was probably out of practice; he and Mary hadn't been able to leave the house much at all in the past few weeks. Since Sylvia had arrived, she had immediately placed upon both of them such an incessant demand for attention that even Sherlock had had to concede the limelight, staying out of the way as much as was possible. Although she might not have been the only reason he kept a low profile.

"And she'll stay asleep the whole time, will she?"

John laughed the hardened laugh of a man who has seen terrible things, and tried to persuade those things to stop crying at four in the morning.

"We can only hope," he said.

"What does that mean? Do you think she's likely to wake up?"

He finally opened the door, and took a moment to breathe in the cold fresh air with great appreciation.

"John, what should I do if she -"

"If she starts crying, Sherlock, I can only pray for both your souls."

And on that less than encouraging note, he slammed the door shut behind him. Sherlock was left feeling slightly out of place in the hallway. Being a man who made a point of being conspicuous wherever he was unwelcome, he picked up the jar in which the Watsons kept their spare keys and shook it in irritation. Why on Earth would one leave them - individually matched with a key ring and address label - in plain sight in the hallway? What if an unpleasant individual were to enter the house? This sort of thing would provide them with untraceable and unlimited access to number of other properties. He would have expected better of John, and wondered what else he had been getting away in those three unsupervised years. Since he had some time to fill, he supposed, he'd be helpful enough to find them a more secure location.

Thinking immediately of a perfect place, he went through to the living room, where Sylvia was sleeping in her moses basket. There was a large bookshelf running along one wall; the obvious solution was to slip each key into a book, the title of which corresponded with the street name of the address of the house the key was for. That way they would be hidden from an intruder, but perfectly easy to find for John and Mary.

He opened the lid of the jar and upended it on the coffee table. The keys came cascading out with a metallic crash, bouncing loudly on the lacquered wood. He was not surprised by the noise, but he only remembered too late that somebody else might be.

He glanced over at the baby, whose eyes were suddenly wide open. For a moment she was silent, merely looking shocked. Then the delicate-skinned little face suddenly turned blotchy red, crumpling up rapidly.

"Ah," Sherlock said, pretty sure he knew what was coming next. Sure enough, Sylvia's tiny mouth yawned open and a wordless wail issued forth. "Ah. I see. Crying now. That's not ideal."

As Sylvia kicked her tiny legs violently, struggling under the soft white blanket, he opened his mental flickbook of Babies. He may never have had to deal with one before, but he had seen parents with their infants plenty of times. It couldn't be that hard. The series of images he recalled provided some common denominators: the baby is picked up; the baby is bounced or rocked in a regular rhythm; the baby is spoken to, soothingly.

Sherlock peeled the blanket off Sylvia, took her middle section firmly in his long fingers and lifted her, screaming, out of the basket. Then, trepidatiously, he copied the typical mothering pose, pressing her body against his so that her chin was resting on his shoulder, and his forearms were supporting her securely. (Don't drop the baby. Delicate cranium not yet fully fused and lack of reflex reactions to try and soften her own fall. Also, John will hold more life-long grudges against you if you drop the baby.)

Sylvia continued to wail. He wondered if he was doing this right. But, seeing no evidence to suggest he was doing it wrong, he went on.

Step two. He used his upper body to twist Sylvia left and right, gently, in a similar sort of motion to being on a rowing boat in small rapid waves. The noises she was making didn't seem to be subsiding at all, but now that the first two requirements for baby-calming were fulfilled, he felt compelled to complete the third.

"Sylvia," he said. "Please be reasonable. You cannot make this ridiculous kind of noise because of a jar of keys. Stop it. Furthermore, while I have no doubt that if your father returns and discovers me unable to console a weeping child, he will not be surprised or taken aback, it is still a situation I would prefer to avoid. As a matter of fact I suspect that is exactly what he expects to happen. I'd like to prove him wrong."

It shouldn't have been amazing, given all the examples of its effectiveness, but this worked. He stopped, slightly incredulous, and appreciated the silence. However after a few seconds, Sylvia started grumbling again, so he started again quite quickly.

"You see, leaving me here with you is in fact perfectly unnecessary. It is unimaginable that I was the best babysitter he could get hold of. Your father, like most of the population, is frustratingly obsessed with all sorts of complicated social games. He is attempting to make me play one with him, one that he can only possibly win. You see, if I am incapable of coping with the presence of his child, he wins, as he is proved correct: there is no room for me in his life now. Something he only insists on because he doesn't seem to understand why he's finding it distressing to adjust to my returned presence, but never mind that. However, if I win, and I turn out to be some sort of natural genius at childcaring, he gets proved wrong but he also gets to hope that he may, in fact, be able to return to something like his previous friendship with me."

He paused, and patted Sylvia on the back affectionately.

"I suppose you can see which is the preferable scenario as far as I am concerned. Although you are, naturally, an impartial observer."

Realising he was going to have to find something to keep talking about if he wanted her to stay quiet, he glanced over at the pile of story books by her basket.

"Oh, dear," he said, wrinkling his nose. "Do they really read you this? Why on Earth would you want to know about farm animals? I hope they're not encouraging you to take up a career in agriculture..."

* * *

When John stepped up to his front door, he could hear Sherlock's voice going on at a fast pace about _something _inside, but he couldn't quite make out what. It stopped the second his key slipped into the lock. He stepped inside and went into the living room with a frown, which deepened when he saw his daughter fast asleep in Sherlock's arms, and Sherlock guiltily putting his phone back in his pocket.

"What were you reading to her?" he asked, suspiciously.

"Nothing interesting," said Sherlock dismissively.

John was not satisfied.

"No, I'm sure I heard you reading out my - Sherlock! You were, weren't you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You can't read that to my daughter. It's not appropriate."

"She doesn't understand it."

"So you admit it? You were reading her my blog?"

"It's better than Old McDonald," Sherlock pointed out, defensively.

John sighed loudly, and put his parcel down on the coffee table. At this point he saw the pile of keys, which he stared at for a few seconds before visibly deciding not to ask.

"Well. I'm pleased to hear you admit it's better than _something_. Is it really still online?"

"Why wouldn't it be? You don't think they just wantonly delete websites that aren't updated for a few years?"

He shrugged. "No, I was only wondering if it was possible to will things out of existence."

"Of course it is. Unless you mean in some other way than hitting the 'delete' button on your laptop."

John sat down on the sofa next to Sherlock and held his arms out, asking for Sylvia. Sherlock eased her off and handed her to her father, who took her gently and kissed the top of her head. Then, murmuring into her scalp, he admitted,

"I did try to do that once or twice. But I couldn't."

Silent, Sherlock examined the pattern of wear on the remote lying on the arm of the sofa. He said, after a long moment, "I'm glad."

They didn't look at each other.

"No trouble with her, then?"

Sherlock glanced sideways at his friend. "No."

John smiled, and stroked the soft baby hair on her head with a fingertip. "Then I'm glad, too."


End file.
